Notes From South Beach: Dining While Black

When I was a boy, my mom used to tell my brother and me that as adults, we'd need good jobs. This wasn't just sound parental advice. She was commenting on our love of going out to eat. And our expensive taste in food. And the fact that we ate a lot.  

As an adult, I have a couple of jobs that, taken together, allow me to live reasonably comfortably. I continue to have a relatively sophisticated taste in food (though I'm always down for McDonald's fries). I still love to eat a lot. 

Unfortunately, going out to eat is often not a pleasant experience for me anymore. Case in point:

A couple of weeks ago, I was in Miami Beach with friends. One evening, we went to a place that has rave reviews for its Cuban seafood cuisine. 

When the waitress arrives to greet us at the door, she looks worried, or maybe just preoccupied. She scans the dining space, and tells us that a place would have to be cleared for our party of four. 

The restaurant is filled, but not to capacity---there is at least one empty table. Nevertheless, we'll have to wait.  

Moments later, we're sitting in a room that isn't visible from the establishment entrance. To get to it, we've crossed the long narrow aisle between the seats of the resturant, past a table being bused by the staff. We've walked past the bathrooms and the kitchen, beyond the small bar and television. 

If the front of the restaurant is midtown Manhattan, where we're placed is Far Rockaway. If the front of the restaurant is DC, our placement is  Alberta, Canada. If the front of the resturant is London, we're out  in Siberia. 

The arrival to our table is heralded by the piercing shriek of a toddler. The scream is so intense that the hangover I've carefully nursed all day morphs into a full-on throbbing headache. 

In fact, the two tables we're sandwiched between are occupied almost entirely by children. Young children. Blabbering-drooling-spitting-picking-at-their-food-picking-their-noses-laughing-crying children. 

The few adults in the room half hazardly admonish the youngins between gulps of a deep purple sangria. 

This is obviously the kids room.
The youngest member of our party is 29.
Hmm...

Racists! Perhaps the waiters saw us coming and tried to remove us from view, hiding us in the back room!

Homophobes! Maybe they observed that our party had two women, one with a short cut, and thus tried to remove us from view.  

Classists! I wore shorts and my brother had on jeans. One of our crew had visible tattoos. It's possible they assumed we were some sort of cheapskate hipsters that wouldn't tip them...and they therefore attempted to remove us from view...

These sorts of bizarre dining-out occurrences don't just happen in south Florida. In New York, for example, all manner of things go down.

Take the first major step of service in a resturant, for example. You know, the one where the server is supposed to acknowledge you by asking if you'd like something to drink or let's you know the specials. In many instances, 10-20 minutes can go by without as much as a glance from restaurant staff. Busboys buzz by. Chefs chat up other patrons. Waitresses and waiters wait on others and shoot the shit. No one seems to see us. 

My brother, in fact, started setting a timer to monitor the speed of acknowledgment (Sociologists, take note. Speed Of Acknowledgement  or SOA is a coefficient you'll give me credit for naming one day).  If no one has addressed us after 7 minutes at the table, we have to make a decision on whether to stay. We've left many a retaurant before being addressed.

In other cases, we are in fact taken care of for awhile. In these scenarios, service is solid enough all the way up to the point when the check is due. Then, everything  breaks down. Can't find a waiter or waitress to bring the bill. Can't find a busboy to get a waiter. Can't find a dishwasher (on break?) who could find a busboy to find a waiter. Suddenly, we're invisible. 

I remember one time at a place in the Bronx, I raised my hand  to inquire after the bill.  After several minutes, it became clear to me that the waitress was avoiding making eye contact with me. I raised my hand higher. Tried calling out politely. Raised the other hand. Stood up out of my chair. And finally shouted. Rudely. 

And then of course, there are the places where the serving staff talk to you in any old manner they feel like. About a month ago, I was out with a group of young black professionals. The four of us in the group were the only black folk in the place.  

 One of our party mentions to the manager that she in fact knows the owner,  and congratulates the man on the success the business seems to be enjoying.  About 45 minutes later, after we'd settled into our meals, another waiter asks us if we'd like to pack our food to go. We're clearly enjoying our food, and my friend who'd chatted up the manager jokingly asks if we're being  kicked out.

"Sorta, yea," replies the bartender, his voice sharpened with a hard ironic edge.

We get the fuck out. And promptly text the owner about his establishment. 

At another place, a dive bar in queens, my brother was out with work buddies. Michael Jackson's PYT came on the speakers, and he couldn't resist. He began belting it out, shaking off the staid mundanity of the day with every "he-he."

"HEY! YOU! Shut the Fuck up!" Blasts the bartender. 

The bar freezes. Everyone stares. No one says a word. My brother leaves. 

It's hard to tell if in every anecdote, some sort of racial injustice is occurring.  I don't, after all,  have an empirical method to monitor such things (though I'm sure someone does, somewhere). 

What I do know is that I'm treated badly a lot,  and that it feels, well, bad.  Instances of mistreatment are so common that I'm sure I've forgotten many a nasty situation.  I've accepted the abuse in many instances, allowing indignities to occur in the name of avoiding conflict and keeping the peace. I can't, after all, walk out of every restaurant, curse every waiter, boycott every bar. That gets to be exhausting. 

Last week, a friend of mine who I hadn't seen in a minute told me that I have a persecution complex. She said she was joking, but we both know she wasn't.  Paranoia is a state of being for me. It comes with the territory of being black in America.

Election Day

It's the Monday before election day, and I'm on solo shift at the bar. It's a sleepy late afternoon, and my three patrons and I exchange pleasantries between sips of craft beer.

One customer, a portly man who looks like a 40-something Santa Claus (sans beard but all twinkling eyes) , grins at me over his fourth bourbon-ale and asks me the following question:

"So Chris: what is this election for? Who are we voting for tomorrow?"

I laugh and demur, eventually mumbling something about being registered in Ohio. I look around at my other customers, and no one pipes up. I don't think any of us has any idea what the local contests are about , or even what the issues are.

I wonder aloud if my (our?)  ignorance is typical of the American populace. Another of my customers, an Englishman on holiday visiting his daughter who lives in a nearby apartment building, assures me that Americans' lack of knowledge of their own political system is typical. He guesses that only 50% of the American electorate is registered to vote, and that only half of this group actually votes.

The group of us at the bar starts talking at once, demanding the Englishman's source. Obviously he hasn't gotten over America's successful move to independence, and is spouting nonsense.

A cursory Google search (on the brewery's POS system aka an iPad)  puts the debate to rest:

Of the electorate that is eligible to vote in the U.S., only 57.5 % actually voted for president in 2012.  In fact for the last three presidential elections, participation has sat between 55% and 60% of the eligible voting populace. And on an off year election year like this when we aren't voting for president, I can imagine that number is much lower. So, while the Englishman's stats are off, it's pretty clear that the American public's participation in its own democracy is pretty weak.

That Google search took a lot out of us. After a long sip of beer to recover some semblance of pride (and to cover our shame at our abysmal showing in the world's most successful political experiment), Santa Claus offers up an explanation for why people don't vote:

"It must be because things are pretty good in America. People say 'fuck voting'  because they're pretty damn satisfied with the world."

The Englishman makes a face as though there was a real possibility that Santa's right. The other patrons cast fugitive looks at Santa, obviously interested in this nugget of opinion. Santa, satisfied with his assessment and not feeling the need to elaborate, orders a fifth ale, and tips generously.

Sometimes, balls out, unnuanced, bald faced white privilege catches me unawares, and I'm left with a sensation not altogether unlike the out of body experience of jumping into a freezing lake on a brilliant June day--shock, and then odd refreshment. I pour a little bit of beer out for myself.

As a black millennial who, at this juncture, spends most of my time (outside of my job at the bar) with persons of color and other millenials, I rarely hear sentiments of gratitude surrounding the American condition. The death of black people everywhere at the hands of the police has brought about  a real and pronounced suffering over the last couple of years. I still tear up when I remember the South Carolinians bible study gunned down in church. A dark cloud descends over me when I think about Eric Garner's murder, and the blatant injustice of the cop that beat the charge. I become incensed when I try for the umpteenth time to understand the death of Tamir Rice, a mere child, mowed down by white fear. And these don't even to speak of the acts of racial violence that I've experienced in my life, first hand.

The supposition that we don't vote because we are satisfied runs counter to the fact that I'm of an age that graduated college into a historic recession, and am experiencing the crushing burden of unremitting student debt.  It contradicts the legitimized slave labor of unpaid internships that I and my peers have had to endure, and the ignominy of knowing that the American promise of outstripping the generations before us has stalled.

As Santa orders beer number 6 ( this Monday afternoon, he's not playing around), I finally find my voice.

"Couldn't it be," I say to him, "that people don't vote because they're just lazy. Or maybe it's that they've lost faith that government can actually make the dramatic change that we're looking for.  It's not that they're  happy about the way things are."

"Maybe,"  replies Santa, his eyes twinkling with Christmastime intensity.  "But be honest. YOU'RE pretty complacent, aren't you?"

I want to say no. That I'm changing things. That I'm down with the cause, fighting the good fight. That I'm beyond making trite advances at the problem. I'm the real deal.

My heart, however, knows better.